S DOGS.

"In these rambles he was generally attended by three
uncompromising-looking dogs, the heads of which, if it were possible to
draw them together in shamrock form, would forcibly suggest Cerberus.
Richard Whately found, or thought he found, in the society of these dogs
far brighter intelligence, and infinitely more fidelity, than in many of
the Oxford men, who had been fulsomely praised for both.

"In devotion to his dogs, Dr Whately continued true to the end of his
life, and during the winter season might be daily seen in St Stephen's
Green, Dublin, playing at 'tig' or 'hide and seek' with his canine
attendants. Sometimes the old archbishop might be seen clambering up a
tree, secreting his handkerchief or pocket-knife in some cunning nook,
then resuming his walk, and, after a while, suddenly affecting to have
lost these articles, which the dogs never failed immediately to regain.

"That he was a close observer of the habits of dogs and other quadrupeds
we have evidence in his able lecture on 'Animal Instinct.' Dr Whately,
when referring to another subject, once said not irrelevantly, 'The
power of duly appreciating _little_ things belongs to a great mind: a
narrow-minded man has it not, for to him they are _great_ things.' Dr
Whately was of opinion that some brutes were as capable of exercising
reason as instinct. In his 'Lectures and Reviews' (p. 64) he tells of a
dog which, being left on the bank of a river by his master, who had gone
up the river in a boat, attempted to join him. He plunged into the
water, but not making allowance for the strength of the stream, which
carried him considerably below the boat, he could not beat up against
it. He landed, and made allowance for the current of the river by
leaping in at a place higher up. The combined action of the stream and
his swimming carried him in an oblique direction, and he thus reached
the boat. Dr Whately adopts the following conclusion--'It appears, then,
that we can neither deny reason universally and altogether to brutes,
nor instinct to man; but that each possesses a share of both, though in
very different proportions.'"[109]

SIR DAVID WILKIE COULD NOT SEE A PUN.--"A DOG-ROSE."

The son and biographer of William Collins, the Royal Academician,[110]
quotes from a manuscript collection of anecdotes, written by that
charming painter of country life and landscape, the following on Sir
David Wilkie:--"Wilkie was not quick in perceiving a joke, alth